Zero Rss

Northeast Heat Wave Arrives As World Cup Matches Get Underway

As the World Cup starts, a prolonged spell of summer heat is expected to grip New York and much of the Northeast through the end of the week and into the weekend.

Daytime temperatures are forecast to reach the 90s across several major cities, while high humidity will make conditions feel even hotter, according to Bloomberg.

Forecasters expect the most intense heat on Thursday and Friday, when heat alerts will be in place across large parts of the region. Multiple cities along the East Coast could see daily temperature records challenged or broken as the unusually warm air mass spreads across the area.

The timing coincides with the start of several FIFA World Cup matches in the Northeast, including games scheduled in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. While temperatures are expected to ease somewhat after sunset, spectators and athletes may still face hot and uncomfortable conditions during evening events.

Bloomberg writes that the heat is also expected to drive up electricity consumption as households and businesses rely more heavily on air conditioning. Transportation networks could experience disruptions as well, since extreme temperatures can affect rail infrastructure and overhead power systems, leading to slower train service.

Elsewhere, a separate weather system is creating risks across parts of the Midwest. Forecasters have warned that strong thunderstorms could bring damaging winds, large hail, isolated tornadoes, and localized power outages, potentially affecting travel and other infrastructure.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 11:05

Anthropic Blocks Foreign Access To Fable 5, Mythos 5 After U.S. National Security Order

About four days after Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a next-generation "Mythos-class" AI model, the frontier AI lab led by Dario Amodei revealed late Friday that it was disabling foreign customers' access to these cutting-edge models, citing an export-control directive from the federal government.

"The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees," Anthropic wrote on X around 9 p.m. ET.

The AI lab's website stated that the federal directive was received around 5:21 p.m. ET. To ensure compliance, the lab was forced to shut off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers.

Anthropic continued, "The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Claude models is not affected."

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.

The net effect of…

— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) June 13, 2026

Anthropic pointed out that it understands the government's concern centers on a potential method of bypassing, or "jailbreaking," Fable 5.

Dario's company laid out some of Fable's safeguards:

• We have instituted strong safeguards that greatly reduce the likelihood that Fable is misused for tasks related to cybersecurity (among others). In fact, our safeguards are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.

• In the weeks leading up to the launch of Fable, Anthropic worked with the US government, the UK AISI, multiple private third-party organizations and internal teams to red-team Fable's safeguards for thousands of hours in total.

• These tests showed that Fable's safeguards are substantially more effective than those of any previously deployed model.

• No testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak—a jailbreak method that can very broadly bypass the model's safeguards, unblocking a wide range of cyber capabilities.

• We suspect that perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider. Every safeguard used in the industry is vulnerable to non-universal jailbreaks (which can elicit some cyber information in specific circumstances), and it is likely that universal jailbreaks will eventually be found in the future. We stated this clearly when we released Fable 5.

• Given that perfect jailbreak resistance does not appear to be possible today, Anthropic adopted a defense in depth strategy with Fable 5. We aimed to make jailbreaks either narrow (in the case of non-universal jailbreaks) or very expensive to produce (in the case of universal jailbreaks), and to combine this with thorough monitoring to quickly detect and shut down any successful attacks. This is also why Anthropic has required 30-day retention of customer data with Fable—a policy change that carries real costs for us with customers, but that allows us to research and mitigate jailbreaks.

• We stand by this defense in depth strategy. It reduces the risks posed by Fable, making them comparable to the risks of existing models already deployed across the industry.

• We have not even received a disclosure of a concerning non-universal potential jailbreak that led to a harmful result. The potential jailbreaks that have been disclosed to us are either entirely benign responses or are minor findings that provide no Mythos-specific uplift.

Jailbreak concerns already out in the X universe? 

this is definitely what got fable banned https://t.co/3b0rmIIdLe

— Wes Winder (@weswinder) June 13, 2026

Last week, shortly after Tuesday's Fable release, BMO analyst Brian Pitz told clients, "We maintain that Anthropic is the leading pure-play AI lab, combining best-in-class model intelligence with its cutting-edge, benchmark-leading Claude Fable 5 frontier model released June 9, 2026; with clear commercial traction and momentum in its enterprise offerings."

Pitz said, "Anthropic's strengths are particularly evident in coding, agents, and enterprise, where Claude has emerged as a leading model powering tools such as Claude Code and Cowork, both of which have scaled rapidly. This reinforces the company's advantage in translating model intelligence beyond benchmark performance into viable, real-world applications—what we view as the next key battleground in AI."

The release of Claude Fable 5 prompted Pitz's team to declare, "While it is too early to crown a winner among foundation models, we see Anthropic and OpenAI as the leading pure-play AI labs today."

Read Pitz's note here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 09:55

Britain Goes Full 'Airstrip One'

Authored by Stephen Green via PJMedia.com,

In George Orwell's 1984, Great Britain was just a province of Oceania named "Airstrip One" as a none-too-subtle nod to the U.K.'s role as host to the heavy bombers of U.S. Eighth Air Force during World War II.

Four decades past the real 1984, and there's still no Oceania. But Britain looks more and more like Airstrip One as Parliament considers a bill opening up everyone's smartphone to government supervision — and jail time for tech execs who don't submit.

You had to figure this was probably coming, right?

Right.

Reclaim the Net reports that "Ministers are reportedly drafting a law that would force Apple, Google, and the rest to make it impossible for a child to send, receive, view, or share a single nude image, with the executives who refuse facing up to five years in prison."

That might sound all well and good, but as usual, For the Children™ is little more than the government's justification for total surveillance.

"You cannot block every naked picture someone might stumble across without inspecting every picture, every message, every video call, every streamed film, on every device, all the time," Reclaim noted, with nudity serving as "the excuse and the unbroken view into your phone is the actual prize."

The industry term is "client-side scanning," which sounds much nicer than "a government mandated app that looks at everything on your phone all the time."

And even that sounds better than "Big Brother is Watching You," which is exactly what it is.

As already required by Britain's Online Safety Act, Apple and Google forcibly install age verification on every iPhone and Android device in the UK via app store updates.

No, it can't be uninstalled.

As I reported in January, what this means in practice is that London's Office of Communications ("Ofcom" in Newspeak) mandates on-device software able to read everybody's "private" messages in real-time and scan their images, too, before any personal encryption tools come into play. 

London pinky-swears that it'll only look for CSAM and terrorism-related materials, but as the Telegram's Zia Yusuf put it back then, "the slippery slope is obvious" and "mission creep is inevitable." The country looking to ban traditional chef's knives (really!) in the name of safety simply cannot be trusted with this much digital power.

Nobody can, really. 

The way things work now, if you don't pass the mandatory age check, the iPhone software bars adult websites on every installable browser, and the Communication Safety feature scans every AirDrop, FaceTime, Messages, and photo for nudity, blurring whatever it catches. And the Android filter works in a similar way.

All For the Children™, naturally. 

But as Reclaim also pointed out, client-side scanning is "a general-purpose content scanner pointed at one target this year and swivelable toward any other the next, a flyer for the wrong march, a banned book, a face the Home Office has taken against."

Now that the software is installed, Parliament can authorize the Home Office to ignore the age check and look for whatever it wants to on literally everyone's device. That's exactly what Parliament wants to do next.

Orwell envisioned ever-present two-way telescreens mounted on almost every wall that could only try to monitor everyone all the time. He never envisioned a telescreen that people would pay good money for, carry around 24/7, and trust with their every notion and secret.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 09:20

Sweden Plans To Lower Criminal Age To 14 Amid Rise In Violent Crime By Children

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

The Swedish government has announced plans to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 14 after dropping plans to lock up violent offenders as young as 13 in special prison units.

Ambulance and police stand at the scene where Swedish rapper Einar was fatally shot in Hammarby Sjostad district, in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 22, 2021. Christine Olsson/TT News Agency via AP

Earlier this month, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer announced plans to cut the age from 15 to 13, but on June 11, he said there was not enough support in parliament for that and that he had agreed to compromise at 14.

"We are going to propose that the age of criminal responsibility should be cut to 14 instead of 13 years old," Strommer told reporters.

Currently, anyone under 15 who is suspected of having committed a serious crime is sent to a youth home, run by social services, and cannot be sentenced to a custodial sentence in prison.

Strommer said in 2025 that more than 50 children under 15 were suspected of murder or attempted murder.

There has been a surge in gang crime and drug-related violence in Sweden over the past 20 years, and it now has one of the highest rates of shootings and bombings in Europe, dozens of which were carried out by minors.

Thousands Of Gang Members

Swedish police estimate there are 17,500 active gang members and around 50,000 who are loosely associated with them.

Magnus Lindgren, a former police chief in Uppsala County and current secretary-general of the Safer Sweden Foundation, told The Epoch Times last year that there were about 15,000 "very dangerous criminals" in Sweden, who were divided evenly into biker gangs, football hooligans, and criminals from around 60 high-crime neighborhoods.

Organized crime gangs, such as the Foxtrot Network, use social media to recruit teenagers and children as young as 11 to commit acts of violence, including bombings and murders.

The recruiters, who operate anonymously, post adverts in special groups on social media apps and offer money through banking apps.

The EU's law enforcement agency, Europol, launched Operational Taskforce GRIMM in April 2025 to target so-called "violence-as-a-service," which it said often used "young perpetrators."

After the 2022 elections, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the center-right Moderates, formed a government that includes the Christian Democrats and Liberals, but has the crucial support of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, who campaigned against immigration and in favor of tougher criminal justice measures.

Kristersson's government has overhauled Sweden's criminal justice system, giving the police more powers and introducing tougher sentences for violent crime.

Under the new plans, children aged 14 who are convicted of violent criminal offenses will be sent to special prison units.

The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that the age of criminal responsibility should be no lower than 14, which is the average across the European Union.

Swedish organized crime networks are also operating in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and also in the Netherlands and Belgium, which have the two biggest ports - Rotterdam and Antwerp - for importing narcotics, hidden in cargo.

On March 12, 2025, sanctions were imposed on Rawa Majid, the alleged leader of the Foxtrot Network, one of Sweden's largest organized crime groups, by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

OFAC stated that the gang trafficked illegal drugs and carried out attacks on Israelis and Jews in Europe on behalf of the Iranian government.

Norwegian Teen On Trial

A Norwegian teenager, Johannes Natland, was arrested in Huddersfield, England, in March 2025 and is currently on trial in London, where he has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to murder on behalf of the Foxtrot Network.

Natland, who was 18 at the time, was found in possession of two handguns and 17 bullets and has admitted to possessing firearms.

Giving evidence in court this week, Natland said he had been offered 25,000 euros ($29,000) to kill someone but said he planned to shoot himself in the foot to get out of having to do it, the BBC reported.

"I thought if I was to say no, I would be in serious danger, they're going to hurt my family," Natland said. "I thought they'd kill me."

The Epoch Times reached out to Natland's barrister, Paul Hynes KC, for comment but did not receive a response.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson attends a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on Feb. 26, 2024. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 08:45

Hungary Backs Away From Crypto Criminalization In Regulatory U-Turn

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Hungary is dismantling the restrictive digital asset framework introduced under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a policy overhaul that will decriminalize crypto trading and eliminate the prison sentences that had driven major platforms from the country, government spokesperson Anita Kobol said Thursday, according to Bloomberg. 

The rollback marks a full reversal of legislation that took effect July 1, 2025, after parliament passed rules criminalizing the use of unlicensed exchanges and certain unauthorized high-value crypto transactions. 

Those transactions — ranging between 50 million Hungarian forints (roughly $162,000) and 500 million forints (roughly $1.62 million) — subjected individuals to prison terms of up to two or five years, depending on the transaction value.

Service providers operating without a central bank license faced sentences of up to eight years.

The rules required approved validation for both crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto conversions, a burden that led platforms including Revolut to suspend crypto services in Hungary and triggered an EU probe into whether the restrictions complied with bloc-wide regulations. 

Domestic trading volumes fell as local firms absorbed steep compliance costs.

Hungary’s politically motivated safeguards against bitcoin

Zoltán Tanács, Hungary’s Minister of Science and Technology, characterized the previous rules as “politically motivated” rather than market safeguards and announced the government’s intent to scrap the penalties. 

The new administration plans to abolish criminal prosecution for market participants, revise cybersecurity rules affecting approximately 4,000 Hungarian businesses subject to the NIS2 directive, and align national law with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.

Officials have identified Estonia as the template for rebuilding Hungary’s digital regulatory environment. Tanács said the reforms should draw international platforms back to Hungary and reduce friction for domestic operators, according to Bloomberg.

The shift carries significance beyond Hungary’s borders. The Orbán-era framework was one of the most restrictive in the European Union, and the EU’s inquiry had put Hungary at odds with the broader MiCA framework that governs crypto activity across the bloc. 

Alignment with MiCA would bring Hungary in line with the regulatory standard now binding all 27 member states.

Hungary’s pivot follows a wider trend of governments reconsidering punitive crypto policies. In April, Pakistan’s central bank lifted an eight-year ban on cryptocurrency operations, part of a broader move toward regulatory openness across emerging markets. 

The convergence of those shifts suggests that restrictive unilateral frameworks face mounting pressure as institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates globally and cross-border regulatory coordination deepens under frameworks like MiCA.

The Hungarian government has not yet set a timeline for when the legislative changes will take effect.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 08:10

Romania Asks Ukraine To Add Self-Destruct Function To Stray Drones, After One Exploded At Its Port

Errant Ukrainian drones which wonder across borders and into neighboring Baltic and Eastern European countries are becoming enough of a problem to where some NATO allies pushing for a self-destruct function. 

Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta has proposed that Ukraine program its maritime drones to self-destruct if they veer into the country's territorial waters, coming just on the heels of a major disaster.

AP image: explosion of errant Ukrainian drone at key Romanian port.

The remarks were prompted by a Magura-type kamikaze naval drone having exploded in Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta on Friday. 

Others also detonated while still at sea east of the city, apparently close enough to Romanian waters to be of serious concern - though Ukraine's navy bit back by alleging that Russian signal jamming is to blame. 

Miruta said that "maritime drones can be programmed so that, if control is lost, they are unable to enter Romanian territorial waters and will self-destruct once they are 12 nautical miles from the coast."

"This should be a default feature built into the system from the moment the drone is launched into the water," he said.

A sea drone self-destructed near an oil terminal in Romania's Black Sea port ‌of Constanta, without causing casualties, as Ukraine said Russia jammed the vessel causing it to drift off course https://t.co/aiiVBb6zoI pic.twitter.com/FbtP0DlxPf

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 5, 2026

The drone explosions were serious, just judging by the photographs and videos alone:

 A Ukrainian maritime drone that was being used in the country’s war against Russia exploded Friday at a Black Sea port in Romania, while three other sea drones exploded outside the port, Romanian authorities said. No one was hurt.

The drone that self-detonated in the port of Constanta exploded at around 10:30 a.m., after the area had been secured and isolated by the Romanian Intelligence Service, coast guard and the Defense Ministry, authorities said.

The Romanian government described in a statement: "Immediately after identifying the drone, the Ministry of Defense contacted its Ukrainian counterparts, who confirmed that they had lost control of the operation of four drones."

"The other three drones self-detonated — two offshore and the third outside the port," it added. "Confirmation of these events came from both the Ukrainian side and from data obtained by the Romanian authorities."

Romanian media report the (what appears to be a Magura-type) sea drone discovered in Constanta Port may have carried dozens of kilograms of explosives. The device was found near ARSVOM headquarters and later self-detonated after authorities evacuated and secured the area.… pic.twitter.com/2UanLH7s2w

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) June 5, 2026

There have also been a lot of errant aerial drone incidents of late, prompting NATO to scramble aircraft and shoot them out of the sky. These aerial drones might need a self-destruct feature as well.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 07:35

'The Suicide Of Europe': Historic EU Migration Pact Goes Into Force Today As Fracture-Lines Grow

Via Remix News,

Six years ago, in 2020, French political leader Marine Le Pen described the Migrant Pact, which was then in the planning stages, as the “suicide of Europe.” She said it would bring 60 to 70 million new migrants to Europe, as Remix News reported at the time.

Europe is about to find out just how prophetic its critics have been. On June 12, the highly contested EU Migration Pact officially came into force, instantly triggering a sharp political divide across the continent.

Brussels is already signaling a hardline approach toward resistance; the bloc’s own EU Migration Commissioner recently admitted that the Union is preparing a “crackdown” on member states that refuse to comply with the new relocation directives.

At the heart of the controversy is the pact’s mandatory migrant quotas, framed by Brussels as “burden-sharing.” In practice, critics argue this distribution system allows nations like Germany and France a convenient mechanism to offload asylum seekers onto Central and Eastern European nations – such as Poland and Hungary – which have historically maintained strict anti-refugee stances.

Europe’s anti-immigration politicians are already responding to what they say is a law that will bring disaster to Europe. Le Pen, six years later, is calling for a “constitutional referendum on immigration.”

“Tomorrow, the Migration Pact will enter into force. It will require the States of the European Union to welcome migrants, under penalty of fines. When we come to power, we will propose to the French a constitutional referendum on immigration, the only means to regain control of our migration policy,” she wrote on X.

Demain, le Pacte des migrations entrera en vigueur. Il imposera aux États de l’Union européenne d’accueillir des migrants, sous peine d’amendes.

Lorsque nous arriverons au pouvoir, nous proposerons aux Français un référendum constitutionnel sur l’immigration, seul moyen pour…

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) June 11, 2026

The financial penalties for defiance are severe. Non-compliant governments face fines as high as €21,000 per migrant, potentially costing dissenting nations hundreds of millions of euros. Furthermore, the pact allows for these financial penalties to be adjusted upward in the coming years, which could quickly escalate the cost of non-compliance into billions of euros.

Meanwhile, other establishment European politicians are celebrating the move. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to frame the migration pact as a positive for controlling immigration.

“The migration turnaround has been initiated—nationally and at the European level. As of today, the Common European Asylum System applies: better control and order, faster procedures, and a fair distribution of responsibility. The reform must be implemented effectively. This is how our country will benefit,” wrote Merz.

Die Migrationswende ist eingeleitet - national und europäisch. Ab heute gilt das Gemeinsame Europäische Asylsystem: bessere Steuerung und Ordnung, schnellere Verfahren, gerechte Verteilung von Verantwortung. Die Reform muss effektiv umgesetzt werden. So profitiert unser Land.

— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) June 12, 2026

Of course, the EU is also trying to sell the pact on social media as well.

Fairer rules, shared responsibility and stronger coordination. The EU pact on migration and
asylum starts applying today.

🎥 Watch our video to learn more. pic.twitter.com/ikhjI4P3n5

— EU Council (@EUCouncil) June 12, 2026 The end goal of the EU Migration Pact

Linguistically, the EU’s emphasis on sharing a migration “burden” represents a stark rhetorical departure from the peak of the 2016 refugee crisis. A decade ago, newcomers were widely championed by Brussels as Europe’s future workforce—the doctors, lawyers, and engineers destined to salvage the continent’s aging pension systems. Today, that idealistic language has been replaced by the utilitarian vocabulary of managing a “burden.”

Strategically, the pact acts as a political pressure valve. By reducing the immediate concentration of migrants in Western Europe, Brussels hopes to blunt the rapid electoral rise of populist right-wing parties. Simultaneously, the framework seeks to introduce demographic diversity into Eastern European nations, which EU leadership has long criticized as being overly homogenous and politically conservative. Over the long term, the naturalization and family reunification of these migrants could fundamentally alter the electoral dynamics in these traditionally conservative regions in favor or left-wing and pro-migration parties.

However, Central and Eastern European populations remain overwhelmingly opposed to forced relocation. Decades of polling show a deep societal preference for maintaining current demographic structures, setting the stage for protracted constitutional and political gridlock between national capitals and Brussels.

Hungary under new leadership

The EU’s political chess board has also shifted significantly with Hungary’s recent transition of power. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, long the most fierce opponent of Brussels’ migration quotas, has been succeeded by Prime Minister Péter Magyar.

A report in Euractiv’s newsletter questions “whether some national governments are ready” for the EU Migration Pact, which has “raised questions over whether Brussels will need to crack down on non-compliant capitals.”

In an interview, Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said they are ready to use “sticks” to make countries like Hungary fall into line.

“There are sticks and carrots in the pact. So, you get funding, you get money, only if you apply the pact,” he said.

In fact, Euractiv is quite open that Magyar may be more than willing to sell out the public on the issue of migrant quotas.

“Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, once firmly opposed to the EU migration pact, is now keeping his options open. Pressed by the opposition Fidesz to rule out implementation, he sidestepped the question, saying only that ‘there will be no illegal migrants in Hungary’ under a Tisza government,” wrote Euractiv.

This carefully worded distinction leaves the door wide open for the arrival of migrants who are processed “legally” under the parameters of the new EU framework. Unsurprisingly, Commissioner Brunner has lauded the new Hungarian administration’s shift, calling the government “very constructive” and adding, “Our job is to explain the advantages for Hungary and make them visible on a political level.”

Certainly, Brunner was smart enough to not frame the new migration pact as the “suicide of Europe” while trying threaten the new Hungarian government. He can be given that much credit.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 07:00

Mother Of All 'Ifs': Trump Officials Claim Iran Deal Delivers Peace, Inspections & Hormuz Reopening; Iran Says Indeed 'Close' Summary

• Araghchi: A deal, if reached, will be signed remotely by both sides and then announced.
• The UAE had agreed to release a total of $10b, more than $3b of which had already been delivered (Reuters).
• Bloomberg latest: US Senior admin officials says Iran deal accomplishes core US objectives and deal reopens Strait of Hormuz; Iran deal guarantees long-term peace in region and includes inspection regime.
• Pakistan PM Sharif: "we can confirm that a final, agreed upon text of the peace deal has been reached & Pakistan is now working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps."
• Surprise, surprise: Iran FM says sides "have never been closer and pending its finalisation, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content, details to be shared in due course."
• Trump on Truth Social rejects Iran's version of MoU terms (below): "What they said, including their weak & pathetic statement on having a deal, bears no relation to the truth."
• Tehran: "Contrary to what is being circulated by Western media, Iran will not commit to relinquishing control of the Strait of Hormuz."
• CNN speculates (prematurely, it seems) on Geneva signing of 'Islamabad Declaration' as soon as Sunday or next week.

//--> //--> //--> US x Iran permanent peace deal by June 30, 2026?
Yes 32% · No 69%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

UAE Ready to Unlock Billions for Iran as US Deal Gets Closer

There's been much more movement on a final MoU revealed today that previosly. Now Reuters is reporting on potentially unlocked Iranian funds, in order to get a negotiations format back to the direct negotiating table, to hammer out a final peace deal.

The UAE has agreed to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, Reuters reports, citing four sources:

• The UAE had agreed to release a total of $10b, more than $3b of which had already been delivered
• Two other sources with knowledge of the arrangement tell Reuters the move put the total funds involved at $20b
• Reuters could not establish whether the funds earmarked for the transfers belong to the UAE or originate in long-blocked Iranian accounts in the ⁠UAE banking system, or elsewhere
• “The UAE’s foreign policy is guided by promoting de-escalation ​and reducing tensions across the region, while advancing lasting peace and stability, a UAE official tells Reuters. “The UAE supports efforts, including those undertaken by the United States, to protect the peoples of the region from the repercussions ​of conflict”

Trump Admin Official: Imminent Deal Accomplishes Core US Objectives

Bloomberg is out with some specifics, via an unnamed Trump admin official, providing some further texture to what seems the most 'hopeful' (emphasis on the tick marks) development concerning a finalized Memorandum of Understanding to end the war and hash out a final deal...

It remains that there are a healthy dose of ifs in here...

BBG: US Senior admin officials says Iran deal accomplishes core US objectives and deal reopens Strait of Hormuz [Iran has a very different interpretation of this point]; Iran deal guarantees long-term peace in region and includes inspection regime.

• If Iran complies, will be rewarded economically.
• Benefits for Iran accrue if they actually deliver.
• US expects to sign agreement overt next few days.
• US to get enriched material under Iran deal.
• Draft agreement also lifts US blockade and leads to dismantlement of Iran nuclear programme.
• Iranians don't get anything upon signing agreement.
• Not quite at finish line yet, but very close.
• 80-85% confident a deal gets signed.
• Iran deal is specific about opening Strait and lifting of blockade and moving of enriched material.
• Will be significant sanctions relief based on how Iran performs.
• US seen substantial progress in text of agreement.
• Regional peace agreement is broad.
• Agreement on specificity over destruction and removal of enriched material.
• Confident Israelis will get on board.
• Some Iranians don't love this deal, but think dissent is quite minimal.

Vice President JD Vance has sought to clarify the US position:

Iran is "not receiving any cash" just for signing a deal, Vice President JD Vance said Friday.

Vance said in a post on X that he was "seeing a lot of fake information about a potential deal."

"The Iranians are not receiving any cash, and no funds are being released for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting," he said, adding that the agreement on the table had been structured, "to ensure that the U.S. and its allies' concerns are prioritized."

Only if Iran "meets its obligations, then economic benefits will flow to them and to the entire region."

"This deal has the potential to remake the region and lead to lasting peace," he said. "The president is going to get us a good outcome, one way or the other."

As a reminder, here are the 14-points issued by the Iranian side on Friday:

1. An immediate and permanent ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon.

2. A commitment by Washington not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and to respect its sovereignty.

3. A complete lifting of the maritime blockade within 30 days.

4. A commitment by the United States to withdraw its forces from the vicinity of Iran.

5. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days, according to Iranian arrangements.

6. The suspension of sanctions imposed on the sale of oil, petrochemical products, and their derivatives, while enabling Iran full access to the financial resources generated from them.

7. The necessity of presenting reconstruction plans for Iran valued at no less than $300 billion by the United States and its allies.

8. Conducting negotiations within a 60-day period to reach a final agreement that includes nuclear issues, the full lifting of primary and secondary U.S. sanctions, as well as the cancellation of resolutions by the UN Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

9. Iran reaffirms its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) not to produce nuclear weapons.

10. A U.S. commitment, during the negotiation period, not to increase its forces in the region and not to impose new sanctions on Iran.

11. The release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian funds within 60 days, with half of this amount made available to Iran before the start of negotiations and after signing the memorandum of understanding.

12. The establishment of a monitoring mechanism to implement the agreement.

13. The approval of the final agreement through a resolution issued by the UN Security Council.

14. Final negotiations will not begin before the release of half of the frozen Iranian funds, the suspension of oil sanctions on Iran, and the lifting of the maritime blockade. 
The final agreement shall be limited to the fate of enriched materials, uranium enrichment activities, the lifting of sanctions, and the reconstruction program of the Iranian economy, while excluding any discussion of Iran’s missile program and support for resistance movements from the agenda entirely.

There's clearly still some seriously daylight between the warring sides, however, so by close of the weekend - or possibly just within the next hours - the reality of the situation is likely to be made known. Via newswires:

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Says Iran's decision-making bodies are meeting about the memorandum - State TV.

IRAN CIVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ACCEPTABLE: US OFFICIAL

Pakistan PM: Final MoU Text Has Been Reached

Pakistan Chimes In with PM Sharif declaring that "we can confirm that a final, agreed upon text of the peace deal has been reached and Pakistan is now working closely with both sides to finalize the next steps." Oil drops lower.

• SHARIF: FINAL, AGREED UPON TEXT OF PEACE DEAL HAS BEEN REACHED
• PRESIDENT TRUMP TOLD ME IN A SHORT CALL THAT HE CONSIDERED IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER ARAGHCHI'S POST "VERY POSITIVE" - AXIOS REPORTER

Amid ongoing intense mediation efforts by Pakistan, we are fully aware of incessant misinformation campaign being waged by those who want to sabotage the peace deal. Setting aside the noise, we can confirm that a final, agreed upon text of the peace deal has been reached and…

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) June 12, 2026 Something Actually New Under the Sun

Now this is a true first: President Trump sharing FM Arachchi's tweet...

First Time Iran Pushes Positive 'Closer Than Ever' To Deal Statement, Oil Drops

Amid the constant back and forth yo-yo and ping pong concerning how close or not a final MoD between Tehran and Washington is, now Tehran is pushing the "never been closer" rhetoric, which is somewhat of a surprise given Trump just called their own public '14-points' "fake news" in terms of US agreement to it.

But this is the first time in a long while that the Iranian side has side anything positive on the question of reaching a deal, and getting back to a direct negotiating framework.  The country's top diplomat has just stated that the warring sides have never been closer and pending its finalisation, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content, details to be shared in due course.

After crude jumped on Trump's 'fake news' Truth Social (below, which indicated he had not accepted many key Iranian demands), oil pushed back down on the new Araghchi statement:

The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding has never been closer. Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content.

In line with our responsible and transparent approach, all details will be shared with the public in due course.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) June 12, 2026 Trump Bats Down Iran's MoU Narrative & Terms

And there it is: President Trump himself denies the earlier in the morning return of a 'deal is near' - by taking to Truth Social and rejecting the stated Iranian terms (as delivered publicly in state media sources):

What they said, including their weak & pathetic statement on having a deal, bears no relation to the truth.

Immediately, the expected and familiar spike in oil and the return to pessimism, though at this point there have been no bombs away, after the White House canceled what was to be a third night of strikes (last night):

'US-Iran Deal Is Near' Narrative Returns, But Tehran Refuses To Surrender Hormuz Leverage

After having heard the same line many, many times before - and yet with no result (instead, more often the opposite of sliding into further conflict and escalation) - Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday welcomed the "progress" made between the United States and Iran in indirect negotiations.

CNN and other mainstream outlets are reporting on this "hint" that an interim deal taking shape (again). But given the pattern and track record of such reporting, which has consistently proven premature, elusive, and often downright false - it's hard not to have cynicism and to see much of this as but crude propaganda aimed at keeping energy prices down.

"Both sides welcomed the progress achieved through sustained diplomatic engagement and expressed hope that these efforts will soon lead to a durable understanding and peaceful resolution," according to Pakistan’s readout of a Foreign Ministry call with the European Union's chief diplomat.

via AFP

And yet, the message out of Iran does not suggest positive momentum or the beginnings of any kind of deal taking shape - though it remains that anything is possible (depending on how much either side is willing to 'give up' their respective red lines and firm positions).

Iran: Strait is 'Firmly' Under Our Control, Won't Give it Up

Iran is currently saying the Strait of Hormuz is 'firmly' under IRGC control - an assertion the Pentagon has vehemently rejected, with Iranian Admiral Habibollah Sayyari saying it continues to wield "power" over the Gulf region.

"The west of the Strait of Hormuz, the strait itself, and the Persian Gulf are under the firm control of the IRGC Navy," Sayyari was quoted as saying in state media. "No vessel can enter without our permission." Another commander also asserted that "We have had and continue to have power in the region" - batting down Trump's words which say Iran's military has been utterly defeated and decimated at this stage.

CNN Claims MoU Signing In Geneva Planned: Really?

But again, returning to the optimistic Friday reports, which may have no basis in reality whatsoever (time will tell), CNN is going so far as to report on the venue of a signing ceremony for a Tehran-Washington Memorandum of Understanding:

A signing ceremony for a memo of understanding with Iran would most likely be held in Geneva, Switzerland, three sources told CNN on Friday. That signing could take place as early as Sunday, according to a person familiar with plans.

That comes after US President Donald Trump on Thursday touted a “great settlement” that could resolve the war with Iran, suggesting it would be finalized in the coming days. Trump said he anticipated a signing ceremony for the document soon, potentially in Europe, to be attended by Vice President JD Vance. However, Iranian officials have yet to confirm an agreement has been reached.

Two sources with knowledge of the diplomatic talks said the signing ceremony would be held in Geneva – not far from where Trump and a US delegation will attend a G7 summit next week in France. One of those sources said a signing ceremony would mark the start of “phase two” of diplomatic talks, as officials work through the implementation of the memo of understanding.

Multiple sources said the memo is being called the “Islamabad declaration,” in recognition of the key mediating role Pakistan played. But nothing has been confirmed, and an Iranian source suggested the Austrian capital Vienna was also being considered.

According to reports from Iran, the proposed deal may be even more scandalous than what was reported last night.

Iran’s Mehr News Agency, citing a source close to the Iranian negotiating team, claims the draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Iran… https://t.co/rMctp2wbPS

— גיא עזריאל Guy Azriel (@GuyAz) June 12, 2026

But the nature of the MoU would likely just involve committing to a framework basis on which both sides would get back to the negotiating table, and not yet necessarily a final, lasting peace deal. Iranian state media on Friday did seem in agreement that there's been some level of progress on at least getting back to formal talks based on a MoU, per Bloomberg:

Iran’s semi-official news agency Mehr said the countries are negotiating an agreement in which the strait would be reopened within 30 days under Iranian arrangements. Under a draft agreement, the US would have no role in the future management of the strait and Iran would make no commitment to transfer control or restore conditions that existed before the US and Israeli attacks, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Iran Pushes Back Against US/Media Narrative

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has meanwhile rejected media speculations regarding an agreement and reaffirmed Iran’s resolute and principled stance, per Mehr. He stated: "Textually, the text has almost been finalized in its major parts. The problem is that the contradictory positions of the United States have always caused turbulence and disruption in this process."

In terms of even rhetoric alone, the two sides still seem very far apart:

President Trump on Thursday insisted the U.S. was nearing a deal on peace talks with Iran, pulling back from his threats just hours earlier to launch more military strikes and seize Iran’s oil infrastructure.

Trump said Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had signed off on the plan, which he said would be completed in coming days, paving the way for additional talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Tehran said it hadn’t decided. “Iran hasn’t reached a final conclusion about the agreement,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said, according to state media. “We will announce it when we reach a conclusion.”

More hurdles are in the details:

Iran’s IRNA news agency reports the issue of US sanctions on Iran will be left for after the signing of the memorandum of understanding and a 60-day deadline for conducting peace negotiations.

“Iran does not offer any commitments in the memorandum regarding the nuclear issue, and the other party does not commit to lifting the sanctions,” it said.

“If Tehran decides to sign the memorandum, some of its frozen funds will be released immediately, and the rest gradually.”

Iran’s Mehr News claims a draft Trump-Iran deal would leave the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, provide $300B in reconstruction funding plus $24B upfront, suspend sanctions, withdraw U.S. forces from the region, ease pressure on missiles/proxies, and restrain Israel in…

— Amena Bakr (@Amena__Bakr) June 12, 2026

Tehran reaffirms its position in the following fresh statement:

“Contrary to what is being circulated by Western media, Iran will not commit to relinquishing control of the Strait of Hormuz. The only matter referred to in the memorandum of understanding is the return of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz after the end of the war,” Iran’s state media reported.

“The main objective of signing the memorandum of understanding is to end the war on all fronts”, it added.

All of this comes during a week which started with Iran and the US renewing a state of active fighting, and with Gulf states coming under Iranian ballistic missile attack, in retaliation for the latest waves of major US tomahawk strikes against Iran.

Still, Bloomberg and others are reporting the following: "US and Iran Nearing a Peace Deal Around G7 Meeting Next Week." What can be said except we've been here before, and time will tell. Did Trump cancel yesterday's planned strikes because a deal is really finally being forged?

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk

• Iranian media Mehr News reported that the US-Iran 14-point MoU includes a US commitment to lift sanctions, withdraw its forces from around Iran, lift the naval blockade, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift oil sanctions, and release frozen Iranian funds; nuclear issue pushed back by 60 days for final agreement. Additionally, the US is required to present a plan to rebuild Iran’s economy, while the final negotiations between the two countries should focus on nuclear and economic issues, without discussing Iran’s missile program. This text still needs to be reviewed and finalized by the relevant institutions in Iran. [Click here for the full 14-point MoU] 
• The US-Iran MoU is likely to be signed next week, according to CBS citing sources, with Bloomberg later reporting that it could happen at the G7 meeting in Geneva next week. First steps include ensuring "freedom of trade" by demining and opening the Strait of Hormuz. The signing would kick off 60 days of talks to negotiate details. In principle, Iran would commit to a lockout of 15-20 years during which it would not enrich uranium and would dismantle its nuclear sites. In exchange for taking these steps, Iran would receive financial relief staggered over time and sequenced to correspond with compliance.
• US President Trump said he understands that Iran’s Supreme Leader has approved the deal and that lifting the blockade is part of the Iran deal, while he added that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and that they want to make a deal a lot more than he does. Trump added it's a very strong MOU, they found Iran to be rational, and they will make a deal. Furthermore, he said the Strait will open immediately upon MOU signing, maybe Saturday or Monday, but doesn't want to set a deadline for the deal, and stated a Kharg Island deal would be off the table now.
• US President Trump said at a virtual campaign rally that they settled up with Iran and it is pretty much completed, while they got everything they wanted and claimed they ended the war with Iran.
• Israeli PM Netanyahu held a call with US President Trump on Thursday night regarding the possibility of a pending peace deal between the US and Iran, according to CBS News.
• Airplanes associated with US VP Vance's advance team are moving ahead of potential Iran MoU signing, according to New York Post reporter.
• Iran state media said Tehran would not cede control of Hormuz under draft US deal, AFP reported.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the issues raised about the agreement are speculation and the issue has not been finalised, while it added that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is less secure due to US actions and that what is being said about the time and place of signing the agreement is media speculation. Furthermore, the spokesperson said that Iran has so far not reached a final conclusion about the agreement, but stated that the text of the agreement is almost ready.
• Sources cited by Al Hadath said Iran has given final approval, which Qatar conveyed to the US.
• Iranian state media reported that explosions heard in Sirik was related to a confrontation with a vessel that violated regulations whilst attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
• Israeli airstrike reported in Jebchit, southern Lebanon, according to Al Araby.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 03:30

How Bad Is Foreign Influence In America's Nonprofit Universe?

In February, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing titled "Foreign Influence in American Nonprofits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond." While Democrats deflected and tried to make the hearing about MAGA and free speech, the underlying topic remains important.

🧵Senate Hearing Raises Alarms Over FOREIGN INFLUENCE Looting American Pockets 📢

During a Senate subcommittee testimony chaired by @HawleyMO, @seamusbruner connected government fraud, nonprofit funding networks, migrant-based money transfers from U.S. to overseas, and the… pic.twitter.com/4V7B6n8CKf

— Government Accountability Institute (@Govt_Acct_Inst) February 11, 2026

So how bad is foreign influence in America's nonprofit universe? It turns out: very bad.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Earlier this week, the New York Post published a story reporting that CAIR was under investigation by HHS for alleged fraud. The report referred to CAIR receiving $30 million in taxpayer dollars to resettle Afghan refugees, with little proof of how the money was spent.

In HHS letters to the governors of California and Washington, the states in which the alleged fraud occurred, the agency stated that it had been informed that "there may be connections between CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch, Hamas."

The governors of Texas and Florida have both designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization and a transnational criminal organization in 2025, while also taking actions against CAIR.

If CAIR is, in fact, a terror-connected foreign influence operation operating under the guise of tax-deductible American 501(c)(3) nonprofits, that should be of great concern. A look at CAIR's current chapter directory shows approximately 30 active offices and chapters across the Homeland. That figure does not include affiliated mosques with overlapping leadership, nor former CAIR operatives who have gone on to work in government, politics, media, and related fields.

Cuban Intelligence

Just last week, Marco Rubio and the State Department sanctioned ICAP, a known front organization for the Cuban intelligence service. One might ask how this is connected to domestic nonprofits. The answer is: directly, and on a scale that is difficult for the public to understand.

Back in the 1960s, members of the radical-left student group SDS visited Fidel Castro's communist regime in Cuba. Some members of that delegation reportedly received training in guerrilla warfare, including bomb-making techniques. A few years later, some of those individuals went on to form the Weather Underground, America's most notorious domestic terrorist organization, which bombed nearly two dozen federal buildings.

We asked the simple question late last year:

• Is There A "Cuba Connection" Behind The Radicalization Of America's Nonprofit Left

While members of the Weather Underground were in hiding, they allegedly passed messages to one another through the Cuban Embassy.

These radical students were trained through ICAP, a Cuban front organization that has continued hosting American left-wing activist delegations since the 1960s. In the last decade, these efforts have reportedly expanded with assistance from the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), which holds meetings at the Cuban Embassy.

The NNOC website lists 77 American nonprofit organizations as members of its network. Some of these organizations have nationwide chapter structures and multi-million-dollar budgets.

The Neville Roy Singham Network

As has been widely reported, the nonprofit network associated with Neville Roy Singham is also national in scope.

The ANSWER Coalition, which organizes national protests, lists 14 chapters on its website.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the political party associated with this network, lists 66 chapters nationwide and is currently running candidates for public office.

CODEPINK, which has faced scrutiny regarding sanctions-related issues, lists 12 chapters on its website.

The network's headquarters is The People's Forum in New York City. In 23 cities, activists organize through "Liberation Centers," which serve as hubs for local organizing, protest activity, and support for PSL political campaigns.

Domestic Politics and the DSA

Perhaps the most significant avenue through which foreign influence affects American politics is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has increasingly become a coalition of organizations and interests with extensive international connections.

The DSA announced in January that it had surpassed 100,000 members in 2025, including an additional 5,000 members in New York City. The organization has also celebrated a series of electoral victories, including the election of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. The DSA estimates that roughly 250 elected officials nationwide are affiliated with the organization, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Where did the DSA's foreign influence begin? That is difficult to determine, but its international affiliations have expanded significantly over the last decade.

David Duhalde, who served as DSA Deputy Director from 2015 to 2018, is reportedly in a relationship with a member of Samidoun, an organization that has been designated in some jurisdictions as a front group for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In 2017, the DSA passed a BDS resolution. Two months later, Linda Sarsour announced her membership in the organization.

In 2019, the DSA passed a Cuba solidarity resolution and joined the ICAP-connected National Network on Cuba (NNOC).

In 2023, the DSA joined Progressive International, a transnational political network whose board includes Fidel Castro's niece, Jeremy Corbyn, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Wang Hui of Tsinghua University in Beijing, Yanis Varoufakis, and a variety of similar socialist politicians, academics, and diplomats from around the world.

Considering the scale of these networks and their ability to influence protests, elections, and public policy, the United States faces a significant challenge. The extent to which foreign actors and foreign-aligned organizations can shape domestic political movements raises legitimate questions about transparency, accountability, and national sovereignty.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at a regular press briefing that a coming crackdown was nearing for dark-money-funded NGOs and alleged foreign influence operations routed through far-left activist networks.

Even the globalist at The Atlantic had to admit...  

Here, the exchange between a reporter and Bessent suggests the potential enforcement phase has already begun:

Reporter: "I want to ask you about Antifa. In October, the Treasury Department started working with the FBI to investigate who's funding Antifa. Can you give us an update on that investigation? How close are you guys finding out who is funding it?"

Scott Bessent: "It is ongoing. We made substantial progress, and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we are going to have a lot to report."

(Bessent continues on IRS guidance for nonprofits): "The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits they have to file. We are going to demand that nonprofits know their grant recipients. So if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people's rights, then YOU are responsible for that. And I think that's a very good first step."

Watch the Exchange:

🚨 WOW! Scott Bessent just revealed the IRS has moved to make NGOs LIABLE for violent activity committed by their grant recipients like Antifa

George Soros has been put on NOTICE.

"The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits they have to file. We are going… pic.twitter.com/15ToheHbwa

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 28, 2026

Certain NGOs and left-wing activist networks have evolved far beyond traditional nonprofit missions of charity and public benefit, instead functioning as a permanent protest-industrial complex advancing anti-capitalist and anti-Western agendas. This has fueled unrest, mobilized protests, psyops, and worked to obstruct President Trump's pro-America agenda under the banner of social justice.

Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2025

Bitcoin Policy Institute exposed:

All eyes are now on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's expected crackdown.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2026 - 02:30

A Villainous Blueprint For Managed Poverty

Authored by Veronique de Rugy via The Eoch Times,

Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains.

Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in “The Fountainhead” would scheme to seize the global economy’s commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice.

But the people who hold such ideas don’t just appear in cartoons or in Rand’s novels.

Enter Thomas Piketty and company.

In early June, Piketty - the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations and cherry-picked baselines - and his large team unveiled what can only be described as a villainous plan.

It’s a comprehensive program for global managed decline dressed up in the language of climate justice and equality.

The plan is far too ambitious for most nations to accept.

But given the influence of Piketty and his circle of economists on U.S. wealth taxes and prominent global policy proposals, we should take its underlying ideas seriously.

Piketty’s plan would cap GDP per capita in wealthy countries at roughly $69,000, far less than America’s current $94,430.

The plan would also limit annual global economic growth to between 0 percent and 0.5 percent. Monsieur Piketty would allot only 0.115 percent annual growth to the U.S, whose GDP has expanded by more than 3 percent on average since 1930. This would hurt not just the billionaires but every American.

The plan would mandate an international three-day work week and reduce construction activity by 70 percent, manufacturing by 87 percent and even leisure-sector activity by 58 percent.

There would be massive and punishing trade actions against noncompliant countries.

It envisions a “Global Justice Fund” financed not by taxing carbon but by global wealth and income taxes.

This fund would be 20 times the size of current development aid and would be administered by a new international bureaucracy answerable to heaven knows who.

Don’t be fooled by Piketty’s training as an economist.

This is not economic thinking. Consider the utter inconsistency of relying on a vast stock of wealth (mostly from the U.S.) for redistribution while suffocating long-term growth to near zero. Much of the value of the assets needed to finance this scheme would be destroyed. It is also disqualifying to claim that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at 4 percent if we crush the economies that provide the capital for its investments and buy its exports.

Let’s ask the uncomfortable question: What would it require to enforce Piketty’s plan?

About this matter, he is conveniently vague.

Confiscating something on the order of 10 percent of world GDP and redirecting it through a newly created supranational body does not happen by asking nicely.

You cannot restructure the global economy at that scale without a coercive apparatus that dwarfs anything in human history.

The mechanism must be authoritarian.

It would require a world government with the power to tell billions of people which jobs they may and may not hold, what they may build, what they may eat and how many hours they are permitted to work.

And to what end?

“Climate change” is an insufficient answer when Piketty’s entire edifice is built on a discredited foundation. The report relies on a baseline from the “RCP8.5” climate scenario that projects Earth warming by as much as 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. But last month, the UN’s own climate panel officially retired RCP8.5 (always a high-end estimate) as “implausible.” A more central projection is around 2.7 degrees Celsius. Replies to Piketty’s X feed pointed this out immediately. His response, as far as anyone can tell, has been silence.

That leaves the inequality argument. Worldwide income inequality is nearing a 150-year low, but Piketty insists that radical redistribution of wealth is essential for the Global South. And where have billionaires and wealth been popping up fastest in recent decades? Embarrassingly, data from Piketty’s World Inequality Database confirms that it’s in South and Southeast Asia and East Asia. These are the exact Global South regions that have spent recent decades rescuing hundreds of millions of people from poverty through market-directed economic growth.

A core confusion of the degrowth ideology is its conflation of inequality and poverty, in fact two very different things. Reducing inequality by making everyone poorer is not a victory for the poor. The billions of people still lagging in the global income distribution have one realistic path out: growth. Dynamic, market-driven, property-rights-protected growth is the only proven path to prosperity. It’s also the path to environmental improvement, which costs money.

Degrowth is the ultimate luxury belief.

It’s dreamed up by tenured professors in Paris and progressive think-tank pundits in Brussels.

These are people who already have high incomes, comfortable apartments, generous health care and pensions and whose ideas would pull up the ladder on billions of poor people.

Rand’s villains always insisted they were acting for the greater good. They always had elaborate plans. They always needed just a little more power to make it work. And they thought little about the terrible burdens their plans would impose on ordinary people.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 23:25

These Are The Hardest Languages For English Speakers To Learn

For English speakers, learning Spanish or Italian can take less than a year. Reaching the same level of proficiency in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic may require nearly four times as much study.

This wide gap reflects how closely a language resembles English in its vocabulary, grammar, sounds, and writing system.

This visualization, created by Julie R. Peasley via Visual Capitalist, ranks languages by difficulty using categories and study-time estimates from Effective Language Learning and Rosetta Stone, which reference Foreign Service Institute-style benchmarks.

Which Languages Are Easiest to Learn for English Speakers?

Languages are generally easier to learn when they share familiar grammar, vocabulary, sounds, or writing systems. That’s why many Category I languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish, are considered relatively approachable.

The data table below shows the difficulty rankings and estimated learning time for 70 different languages:

Language Category Time to learn 🇿🇦🇳🇦 Afrikaans I 24-30 weeks 🇩🇰 Danish I 24-30 weeks 🇳🇱🇧🇪 Dutch I 24-30 weeks 🇫🇷🇧🇪🇨🇭🇨🇦 French I 24-30 weeks 🇮🇹🇨🇭 Italian I 24-30 weeks 🇳🇴 Norwegian I 24-30 weeks 🇵🇹🇧🇷 Portuguese I 24-30 weeks 🇷🇴🇲🇩 Romanian I 24-30 weeks 🇪🇸🇲🇽🇦🇷 Spanish I 24-30 weeks 🇸🇪 Swedish I 24-30 weeks 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇨🇭 German II 36 weeks 🇭🇹 Haitian Creole II 36 weeks 🇮🇩 Indonesian II 36 weeks 🇲🇾🇧🇳 Malay II 36 weeks 🇹🇿🇰🇪 Swahili II 36 weeks 🇦🇱🇽🇰 Albanian III 44 weeks 🇪🇹 Amharic III 44 weeks 🇦🇲 Armenian III 44 weeks 🇦🇿 Azerbaijani III 44 weeks 🇧🇩🇮🇳 Bengali III 44 weeks 🇧🇬 Bulgarian III 44 weeks 🇲🇲 Burmese III 44 weeks 🇨🇿 Czech III 44 weeks 🇦🇫 Dari III 44 weeks 🇪🇪 Estonian III 44 weeks 🇮🇷 Farsi III 44 weeks 🇫🇮 Finnish III 44 weeks 🇬🇪 Georgian III 44 weeks 🇬🇷🇨🇾 Greek III 44 weeks 🇮🇱 Hebrew III 44 weeks 🇮🇳 Hindi III 44 weeks 🇭🇺 Hungarian III 44 weeks 🇮🇸 Icelandic III 44 weeks 🇰🇿 Kazakh III 44 weeks 🇰🇭 Khmer III 44 weeks Kurdish III 44 weeks 🇰🇬 Kyrgyz III 44 weeks 🇱🇦 Lao III 44 weeks 🇱🇻 Latvian III 44 weeks 🇱🇹 Lithuanian III 44 weeks 🇲🇰 Macedonian III 44 weeks 🇲🇳 Mongolian III 44 weeks 🇳🇵 Nepali III 44 weeks 🇦🇫🇵🇰 Pashto III 44 weeks 🇵🇱 Polish III 44 weeks 🇷🇺 Russian III 44 weeks 🇷🇸🇭🇷🇧🇦🇲🇪 Serbo-Croatian III 44 weeks 🇱🇰 Sinhala III 44 weeks 🇸🇰 Slovak III 44 weeks 🇸🇮 Slovenian III 44 weeks 🇸🇴 Somali III 44 weeks 🇮🇳 Telugu III 44 weeks Tibetan III 44 weeks 🇮🇳🇱🇰🇸🇬 Tamil III 44 weeks 🇹🇯 Tajiki III 44 weeks 🇵🇭 Tagalog III 44 weeks 🇹🇭 Thai III 44 weeks 🇹🇷🇨🇾 Turkish III 44 weeks 🇹🇲 Turkmen III 44 weeks 🇺🇦 Ukrainian III 44 weeks 🇵🇰🇮🇳 Urdu III 44 weeks 🇺🇿 Uzbek III 44 weeks 🇻🇳 Vietnamese III 44 weeks 🇿🇦 Xhosa III 44 weeks 🇿🇦 Zulu III 44 weeks 🇸🇦🇪🇬🇦🇪 Arabic IV 88 weeks 🇭🇰🇲🇴 Cantonese Chinese IV 88 weeks 🇨🇳🇹🇼🇸🇬 Mandarin Chinese IV 88 weeks 🇯🇵 Japanese IV 88 weeks 🇰🇷🇰🇵 Korean IV 88 weeks

One of the most striking findings is the size of the gap between the easiest and hardest languages. While Spanish or French can often be learned in 24–30 weeks, mastering Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic may require roughly 88 weeks of study.

Many Category I languages use the Latin alphabet and share vocabulary roots with English through Germanic or Romance-language connections.

This may also help explain why European languages often rank highly in language-learning apps and why Duolingo’s most popular languages globally include several widely taught European options.

What Makes a Language Harder to Learn?

Category III languages tend to have greater linguistic distance from English. This can include unfamiliar grammar structures, new alphabets, or pronunciation patterns that require more time to master.

For example, languages like Russian, Greek, Hindi, Turkish, and Vietnamese all fall into this category. Some use different scripts, while others introduce grammatical systems that are less intuitive for native English speakers.

The “Super-Hard” Languages

Category IV languages are considered exceptionally difficult for English speakers. This group includes Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean.

Many of these languages present multiple learning hurdles simultaneously. Mandarin and Cantonese require mastery of tones, Japanese combines several writing systems, Korean introduces a unique alphabet and grammar structure, and Arabic uses an entirely different script. Together, these differences significantly increase the time needed to reach professional proficiency.

To learn more about language use across the U.S., check out Mapped: America’s Most-Spoken Languages After English and Spanish on the Voronoi app.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 23:00

Half Of Israelis Agree Deterrence 'Weakened' Following Wars In Iran, Lebanon: Poll

Via The Cradle

Israelis are raising doubts about their government and military's ability to provide security after more than three months of renewed war against Iran and Lebanon. 

According to a Maariv poll released on Friday, 50 percent of Israelis believe their country's deterrence has declined following the recent escalation with Iran and Lebanon, compared to 28 percent who say it has strengthened, while 22 percent are undecided.

via Le Monde

The US and Israel launched a renewed bombing campaign on Iran on February 28. The Islamic Republic retaliated by firing missiles and drones at Israel and US bases in Persian Gulf states until a ceasefire was reached on April 8, largely halting the fighting amid negotiations.

According to the Maariv poll, 49 percent think the Israeli army's freedom to carry out strikes in Lebanon has decreased after the latest confrontation, versus 30 percent who say it has improved and 21 percent who are unsure.

On 2 March, Hezbollah took advantage of Tel Aviv's vulnerability from the war with Iran by renewing its own missile and drone attacks on Israel. Hezbollah had refrained from retaliating to thousands of Israeli bombings of Lebanese territory that violated the previous ceasefire reached in November 2024. 

Israel responded by intensifying its airstrikes and sending ground troops to occupy additional Lebanese territory. At least 30 Israeli soldiers have since been killed and 1,302 injured, primarily by Hezbollah's newly introduced FPV drones.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to launch an attack on Iran despite US President Donald Trump's supposed request not to do so.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Trump stated, "I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn't call the shots."

However, Netanyahu ordered a strike on Iran just hours after Trump's comments. Iran responded by striking targets in Israel.

According to the poll, Israelis are divided in their opinion on Netanyahu's decision to ignore Trump and order the bombing. Around 29 percent said he acted correctly, 36 percent said a stronger strike should have been carried out, and 19 percent preferred to follow the US position.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of poll respondents expressed distrust in Trump, while 21 percent said they trust him regarding Israeli interests in any agreement, and 17 percent said they did not know. A poll published by Israel’s Public Broadcaster (KAN) on 28 April found that a majority of Israelis believe the state has failed to secure victory in any war since October 2023.

According to the survey, 57 percent of respondents said no victory had been achieved, while 28 percent believed success had been reached in at least one arena, and a further 15 percent said they were unsure. 

The findings came after more than two years of Israel's reported genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, during which Tel Aviv waged multiple offensive military campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, alongside attacks in Yemen and Syria and a campaign of destruction and displacement in the occupied West Bank. 

On Thursday, Trump warned that in the coming hours the US would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and take “total control” of Tehran's oil and gas industry before reversing course and claiming that a deal with Iran is expected to be “finalized” soon.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 22:35

"Flying Beer Cooler": Pentagon's Next Kamikaze Drone Ushers In Era Of Cheap Mass-Produced Airpower

Our focus on the rise of the "war unicorn" theme over the last four months, shaped by technological innovation seen in the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, has allowed us, in countless notes, to inform readers very early that 2030s warfare has already arrived. In fact, hyperinnovation in Ukraine, now the world's AI weapons laboratory, is what pulled forward these extremely advanced, low-cost weaponry.

Modern battlefields are now defined by low-cost robotics, whether on the ground, at sea, or in the air, as well as drones, other autonomous systems, and AI-enabled kill chains. Meanwhile, the Department of War's shift toward funding and procuring from defense startups, rather than solely from big defense primes, thanks to DOGE, has accelerated the U.S.'s ability to spur a boom in the defense universe as President Trump's broader war economy ramps up, mainly for stockpiling reasons. 

Let's not forget our view in late January, when nearly all of Wall Street was misguided on alleged water and climate threats from data centers, completely missed that with hundreds of billions of dollars in data center buildouts by hyperscalers, now around $800 billion this fiscal year, these facilities had, and still have, a missing layer of air defense against FPVs and fiber-optic one-way attack drones.

We warned at the time:

• Explosion In AI Data Center Buildouts Will Demand Next-Gen Counter-Drone Security

Then noted:

• "Detect, Track, Neutralize": Autonomous Turrets With Low-Cost Firepower To Counter Kamikaze Drones

In fact, it only took two Iranian attacks targeting Gulf-area data centers with Shahed drones to become a major wake-up call to Wall Street and private equity about the urgency of understanding this threat and how to capitalize.

More importantly, it triggered the urgent need for private equity to begin raising capital for war unicorns that will eventually become major suppliers of interceptors, counter-UAS products, and much more, because much of America's critical infrastructure, data centers, and the list goes on and on, remains entirely exposed to FPVs.

We understand that multiple private equity funds, each with billions of dollars in AUM, have sent personnel to Ukraine to assess the investment landscape across FPV drone, counter-drone, passive acoustic threat detection, and battlefield AI companies. That alone underscores how quickly the "war unicorn" theme is being adopted on Wall Street, one set to surge in the coming quarters.

Going mainstream on Wall Street: 

• JPM Call With Axon Reveals Race To Fortify U.S. Data Centers Against Kamikaze Drone Swarms

• Goldman Sits Down With Anduril As 'War Unicorns' Reshape Defense Tech

This leaves us with the innovation question: the "evolve or die" moment now confronting America's military-industrial complex. The focus must shift away from high-cost weapon systems built around titanium, carbon fiber, and decade-long procurement cycles, and back toward what made the U.S. an industrial powerhouse during World War II: the ability to mass-produce low-cost weapons at scale, rapidly, repeatedly, and in volumes that overwhelm foreign adversaries.

Answering the innovation question above, deep inside America's drone industry is California-based DZYNE Technologies, a company building one-way attack drones from the same material used in beer coolers.

The wings are formed by steam chest molding. That's the process behind beer coolers, bike helmets, and the packaging your TV arrived in. Hot steam, expanded foam, a mold, done. No autoclaves. No exotic supply chain. No aerospace machinists charging aerospace rates.

"We joke that it's a flying beer cooler, and honestly, we lean into it," said CEO Matt McCue. "If your airframe costs almost nothing and pours out of a mold by the thousands, you've solved the problem Ukraine has been screaming about for three years."

That problem is mass: cheap, expendable, attritable mass. Every report from the Black Sea to the Red Sea to the Hormuz chokepoint points to the same conclusion: the side that can afford to lose drones wins. Firing a $2 million missile at a $1,000 drone is a losing trade.

DZYNE's Blitz drone fits in the standard-issue rucksack. It assembles in under two minutes. A new operator is mission-ready in a couple of hours. Range runs 80 to 150 kilometers, with swappable payloads for surveillance or jamming, or it can be easily converted into a one-way attack drone.

Notice what Blitz is not. It's not one of those quadcopters filling your X feed from Ukraine. Those are real and they work, and nobody will say otherwise. But they're one layer of a bigger stack. Multi-rotors burn through batteries just to stay airborne, which makes them deadly in a close fight and spend a lot of energy before the fight gets deep.

A fixed wing gets its lift for free, so Blitz extends the same expendable logic out to 150 kilometers, loiters for hours instead of minutes, hauls heavier payloads, and keeps flying in wind that grounds FPVs. Picture the FPVs owning the last mile while waves of cheap fixed wings seek targets, jam radars, and strike staging areas far behind it. That's not a rivalry. That's a kill chain.

Blitzing is a bet that pressure is cheaper than coverage. NFL football fans understand that, and so does every air-defense crew that has watched a million-dollar interceptor chase a cheap Iranian or Russian drone. That brings us to DZYNE's BlitzBox, a nondescript shipping-container system designed to autonomously launch up to 100 Blitz drones into the air for a coordinated swarming raid.

The American company Dzyne has introduced the BlitzBox system, a container for covertly launching a swarm of attack drones. On the outside, it looks like an ordinary cargo box, but inside, it can hold up to 100 Blitz drones, ready to launch in minutes.#DroneWars #UAS #UAV pic.twitter.com/w9aRaZYrCZ

— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) May 27, 2026

"Adversaries have spent twenty years planning around our big, fixed, easy-to-find bases. A hundred drones in a box that could be anywhere changes that math overnight...

... BlitzBox looks like every other container out there on any truck, ship, port, or railyard. That's a feature," said Ryan Holcomb, DZYNE's VP of Expendables.

That is exactly the logic Ukraine demonstrated last year when it launched a drone swarm deep inside Russia from a modified shipping container positioned near an airbase, targeting strategic bombers.

A drone made from cheap beer-cooler material directly answers the Trump administration and Pentagon's call for low-cost, scalable defense war tech. The question now is how many of these drones the Pentagon will stockpile and how quickly these drones can be produced.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 22:10

Russian Governors Rush To Deny Fuel Crisis As Rationing Spreads

Submitted by Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Russia's authorities and regional governors are racing to assure residents there are no fuel shortages amid an intensified Ukrainian drone campaign at Russian refineries and fuel supply roads.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks this month on key fuel supply routes in its territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea and Mariupol. Several Russian regions have been experiencing fuel shortages as Ukraine hits Russian oil refineries.

Last week, the Moscow Times reported that some gasoline stations in Moscow and regions in northern Russia have started to cap fuel purchases per driver, in a move to prevent panic buying.

Officials are playing down the fuel crisis.

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the northwestern Leningrad region, said this week that "Supplies are being delivered according to plan, there are no shortages," as carried by Bloomberg.

Some isolated complaints about fuel shortages "do not reflect the overall situation," the regional official said.

Governors all across Russia are looking to play down the extent of the crisis.

Meanwhile, earlier this month Russia admitted for the first time that its crude oil production is falling.

Russia's crude oil production has declined since the beginning of the year as a number of local refineries are under unscheduled repairs and maintenance, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, in the first public acknowledgement from Moscow that its output is flailing.

"We have a number of refineries under unscheduled repairs. However, we are maximizing the use of the export infrastructure," said Novak, who represents Russia at the OPEC+ meetings and at discussions about the alliance's output.

Russia is preparing to sharply reduce crude oil exports this month as mounting refinery disruptions, fuel shortages, and Ukraine's bombing campaign force Moscow to divert more barrels into the domestic market.

Exports from Russia's western ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk are expected to fall to roughly 1.7 million barrels per day in June from 2.5 million bpd in May, according to Reuters calculations based on preliminary industry and trading data.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 21:45

America's Hiring Map Has Flipped Since 2020

America’s hiring recovery has split into sharply different regional stories since 2020.

Some states, including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, continue seeing elevated hiring demand years after the pandemic. Others, particularly across parts of the West Coast and Mountain West, have experienced steep declines in job openings.

The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows how job openings changed in every state between February 2020 and January 2026, based on data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The contrast is especially striking in the Mountain West. Idaho leads the nation with hiring demand up over 20%, while neighboring Wyoming ranks last at -39%.

Where Job Openings Have Increased the Most

The rankings below show the change in job openings since 2020 by state.

Rank State Change in Job Openings
Feb 2020 vs Jan 2026 1 Idaho 20.5% 2 Mississippi 19.6% 3 Oklahoma 18.8% 4 Georgia 16.0% 5 Texas 14.2% 6 Ohio 9.9% 7 Missouri 9.7% 8 Minnesota 9.5% 9 District of Columbia 6.5% 10 Louisiana 4.4% 11 South Carolina 3.7% 12 Arkansas 1.6% 13 Connecticut 1.5% 14 Tennessee 0.7% 15 Delaware 0.0% 16 Kansas 0.0% 17 Alabama -1.0% 18 North Carolina -1.7% 19 Florida -1.8% 20 Rhode Island -4.2% 21 Virginia -4.5% 22 Michigan -5.5% 23 Kentucky -6.4% 24 North Dakota -8.7% 25 Utah -10.7% 26 West Virginia -12.0% 27 Maine -12.5% 28 South Dakota -13.0% 29 Pennsylvania -13.2% 30 New York -13.5% 31 Colorado -14.1% 32 Iowa -14.5% 33 New Jersey -14.8% 34 Illinois -15.4% 35 Montana -17.9% 36 Indiana -19.2% 37 Nebraska -20.0% 38 Nevada -20.5% 39 Arizona -22.3% 40 Maryland -22.7% 41 Massachusetts -22.8% 42 Wisconsin -25.6% 43 New Hampshire -26.5% 44 California -27.0% 45 Oregon -28.4% 46 Hawaii -30.0% 47 Alaska -30.4% 48 New Mexico -35.3% 49 Vermont -35.3% 50 Washington -36.3% 51 Wyoming -38.9% -- 🇺🇸 U.S. State Average -9.6% Where Hiring Demand Is Growing Fastest

Idaho leads the nation with job openings up 20.5% since 2020, followed by Mississippi and Oklahoma. Georgia (16.0%) and Texas (14.2%) have also posted strong gains, reflecting continued migration toward lower-cost states and expanding regional economies.

Manufacturing investment is helping drive demand. Billions of dollars tied to semiconductors, EVs, and industrial reshoring have fueled hiring across parts of the South and Midwest. Significant population growth has added another tailwind, boosting both labor supply and consumer demand.

The map highlights how America’s labor market is increasingly diverging at the state level, with neighboring states often moving in very different directions.

Why Many Western States Saw Hiring Cool Off

Several Western states have seen some of America’s steepest declines in job openings since 2020.

Wyoming ranks last nationally, with hiring demand down 38.9%, while Washington is close behind at -36.3%. California, Oregon, and Nevada have also posted sizable declines after the rapid hiring surge seen earlier in the decade.

Much of the slowdown reflects a reversal of pandemic-era expansion, especially across technology and white-collar industries. During 2021 and 2022, many companies aggressively expanded payrolls amid booming demand and cheap capital. Since then, layoffs, higher interest rates, and efficiency-focused cost-cutting have pushed many firms into retrenchment mode.

California alone has announced more layoffs than any other state since 2022. The result is a labor market that looks very different from the hiring frenzy that defined the post-pandemic recovery.

What It Means for Workers and the Economy

Hiring demand affects more than just how easy it is to find a job. It can influence migration patterns, wage growth, housing demand, and local economic confidence.

States with stronger hiring markets often attract more workers, investment, and new business formation, reinforcing long-term economic growth. Weaker hiring markets, meanwhile, may experience softer consumer spending and slower labor demand.

The map increasingly reflects broader economic shifts unfolding across America. Lower-cost states continue attracting people, capital, and industrial investment, while many high-cost markets are adjusting to slower growth after the pandemic-era boom.

The result is a labor market that is becoming more fragmented geographically, with economic momentum increasingly concentrated in a smaller group of states.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic showing where wealth is moving across America.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 21:20

Public Schools Are In A Downward Spiral

Authored by Larry Sand via Heartland.org,

After decades of steady growth, attendance in U.S. K-12 public schools has shifted drastically. Over the past five years, registration has fallen by 2.3 percent, or 1.18 million students, and schools show no signs of rebounding. Lower birth rates are the primary driver of the downturn. The number of births has decreased steadily in recent years, with 690,000 fewer children born in 2024 than in 2007.

California lost nearly 75,000 K-12 students as of the 2025-26 school year, a slide more than twice as steep as the previous year.

Since 2017-2018, the Golden State has seen a 10 percent decline.

New York City has also been hard hit.

As of the 2025–26 school year, 793,300 students are enrolled in K-12 schools, down nearly 10 percent from 2020.

The loss of enrolled students has prompted some desperate measures. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is offering “free” childcare for 2-year-olds regardless of their parents’ income. In 2024, parents of toddlers spent an average of more than $23,000 on center-based childcare, according to the NYC Comptroller.

For those still attending public schools, chronic absence—the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of a school year—is a growing problem. As of January 20, the latest data show that chronic absenteeism, which surged from 15 percent pre-COVID to 28 percent in 2022, remains elevated at 24 percent.

Nat Malkus, American Enterprise Institute’s director of education policy, notes that the surge in absenteeism affects districts of all sizes, racial backgrounds, and income levels. However, the data reveal significant racial and ethnic disparities, with 39 percent of black students, 36 percent of Hispanic students, 24 percent of white students, and 15 percent of Asian students chronically absent.

A major factor behind rising absenteeism is that many students lack motivation to attend school. In 2024, Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students ages 12 to 18 and found that only 48 percent of those enrolled in middle or high school feel motivated to attend. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. Similarly, a 2024 EdChoice poll found that 64 percent of teens said school is boring, and 30 percent view it as a waste of time.

Additionally, a 2024 survey revealed that nearly 64 percent of school parents say K-12 education is headed in the wrong direction, up 8 points from 2023.

Marc Oestreich, an education policy consultant and strategist, writes that in many cases, students are responding to schools that fail to teach them to read, fail to adapt to their needs, and fail to demonstrate that another day in the building is worth their time.

Oestreich asserts, “The honest version of the absenteeism story is not that American parents have suddenly become uniquely irresponsible, or that students have collectively misplaced their work ethic somewhere between TikTok and the bus stop. The honest story is that a substantial number of families, concentrated among the poor, the male, and the badly served, have concluded from direct experience that what their local public school offers is not worth the time.”

While public schools are struggling, private school attendance has remained steady. However, as more parental choice bills advance, the number of children attending private schools will very likely increase. There are currently 75 private school choice programs in 34 states, serving more than 1.5 million students.

Also, the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which takes effect on January 1, 2027, is likely to substantially increase the number of students leaving public schools for private schools.

Through the program, individual taxpayers will be eligible for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to approved scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). In turn, the SGOs will be required to use these contributions to grant scholarships to students at private and public elementary and secondary schools within their states. Students who are eligible to attend public school and whose family income is below 300 percent of the gross area median income will be eligible for the scholarships. The scholarships can be used for qualified expenses such as tuition, fees, books, supplies, room and board, uniforms, transportation, computer technology, equipment, and internet access.

The program is especially popular among black and Hispanic communities, groups most likely to experience chronic absenteeism. A recent poll found that 63 percent of Hispanics and 68 percent of blacks—groups most in need of choice—support a private option.

Thus far, 31 states have opted into the federal scholarship program, and two governors (in Minnesota and Wisconsin) have said their states won’t participate. The remaining states and the District of Columbia have not yet formally decided or announced their decisions.

In states without a private choice program, the best option for parents is to educate their children at home. In fact, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States during the 2024-2025 school year, with an average increase of 5.4 percent, nearly three times the pre-pandemic growth rate of about 2 percent.

Micro-schools, where classes typically have fewer than 15 students of varying ages and schedules, and curricula are tailored to each class’s needs, are growing in popularity and currently educate about 2 percent of the U.S. student population—roughly 750,000 students. Most micro-schools are independently run by parents, though some are part of a formal network that provides paid, in-person teachers. Lessons take place in various settings, including homes, libraries, community centers, etc.

Micro-schools today are less “micro” than they were, according to the latest analysis of the sector from the National Microschooling Center. In 2024, the median number of students in a typical micro-school was 16. That figure has since risen to 22, reflecting the increased experience of school operators, reports Don Soifer, the center’s CEO. However, some now serve as many as 100 students.

In sum, except in the case of declining birth rates, government-run schools are shedding students because many are not offering a worthy product.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 20:55

Globe And Mail Caught Pushing Anti-Musk "Hate" Propaganda, Then Quietly Alters Headline To ...

Summary:

• Globe And Mail Changes Headline After X post Ratioed 
• "Reckless Propaganda": Globe And Mail Op-Ed Tells Readers "How To Properly Hate" Elon Musk Ahead Of SpaceX IPO

Globe And Mail Alters Headline 

The hostile, juvenile, and editorially reckless propaganda, amplified by The Globe and Mail in the form of a Thursday op-ed just before the SpaceX IPO earlier today, had to be walked back after viral blowback.

That headline, which no sane editor would ever publish, and we really thought we were past the period of spreading hate by the lefty community, but apparently not at The Globe and Mail, came after the outlet published an op-ed titled: "Opinion: SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here's how to properly hate him."

"The previous headline on this article did not meet The Globe's editorial standard. It has been replaced," the Canadian outlet wrote. Yet the outlet has yet to delete the X post and instead changed the headline to: "SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Is that a bad look for capitalism?"

X user Enguerrand VII de Coucy, featured in the Community Notes section on The Globe and Mail's X post, wrote:

They changed "Here's how to properly hate him" to "Is that a bad look for capitalism?" which a) doesn't even make sense and b) isn't fooling anybody. They said what they meant with the original headline, it just "didn't meet their standards" because they usually try to hide their actual feelings she motives more carefully.

They changed “Here’s how to properly hate him” to “Is that a bad look for capitalism?” which a) doesn’t even make sense and b) isn’t fooling anybody. They said what they meant with the original headline, it just “didn’t meet their standards” because they usually try to hide their… https://t.co/SUTk1Y4Lhe pic.twitter.com/QzyewRjLWt

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) June 12, 2026

"The important thing to remember when reading hostile Canadian media attacks on American individuals or causes is that the Globe and Mail, CBC, etc. are all funded by their government," X user Overton Defenestration said.

The important thing to remember when reading hostile Canadian media attacks on American individuals or causes is that the Globe and Mail, CBC, etc. are all funded by their government. pic.twitter.com/fqclLsEij2

— Overton Defenestration (@Ov__De) June 12, 2026

"Fomenting hate was not accidental. Your publication continues to trash its reputation," X user Rowan said. 

Fomenting hate was not accidental. Your publication continues to trash its reputation. pic.twitter.com/Y4wUm2i9r0

— Rowan (@canmericanized) June 12, 2026

The Canadian newspaper's anti-Musk propaganda echoed similar rhetoric from unhinged Democrats, left-wing unions, and dark-money-funded NGOs, all of whom now see Musk's trillionaire status as a threat to their power because he will likely divert some of that wealth to fund pro-America movements challenging their progressive empire, which is built on a house of socialist cards.

"Reckless Propaganda": Globe And Mail Op-Ed Tells Readers "How To Properly Hate" Elon Musk Ahead Of SpaceX IPO

Whether it is Elizabeth Warren, left-leaning unions, or Democrat-aligned NGOs funded by dark money, the common pattern here has been an information campaign aimed at Elon Musk to derail the SpaceX IPO. Their motives are very simple: if the game is about power and money, then Musk potentially becoming the world's first trillionaire on Friday morning represents a direct threat to the progressive empire they have built.

Just as with President Trump, the left has mounted a permanent pressure campaign of 'useful idiots' against Elon Musk because he has poured tens of millions of dollars into political campaigns for pro-America candidates - something Democrats, socialists, and Marxists despise. Then, Musk headed up DOGE in early 2025, which resulted in the defunding of USAID - another move by Musk that caused unhinged left-wing NGOs and Democrats to lose their minds.

The anti-Musk crowd was at it again on Thursday, one day before the SpaceX IPO was set to kick off, when a former Wall Street Journal reporter published an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail titled, "SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here's how to properly hate him."

Chris Gay, who appears to have a lot of pent-up hatred for Musk, began the op-ed: "Now that the SpaceX initial public offering is making Elon Musk all but officially the world's first trillionaire, is it okay to despise him just for being one? To broaden the question: are the billionaires associated with widening inequality a bad look for capitalism?"

The op-ed is less about wealth itself and more of a political framing exercise that uses the SpaceX IPO as the catalyst to recast Musk's soaring fortune as a governance risk. Gay attempts to launder what appears to be hatred toward Musk, centering his argument on democracy, inequality, and political capture. In other words, the target is not simply Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire, but the perceived threat that his capital, influence, and political alignment pose to the progressive establishment's grip on institutional power.

Gay wrote, "By donating at least US$250-million to the Trump campaign in 2024, this private citizen positioned himself to kill a congressional budget deal more or less single-handedly, and then to create a bogus federal agency: the "Department" of Government Efficiency. He staffed it with college-age technobrats who among other things effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which millions of people depended upon for life-critical assistance."

Gay's op-ed, which The Globe and Mail posted on X, was heavily ratioed and had a Community Note ... 

Here's what X users said in response:

This is classless and dangerous.

You’re a disgrace @globeandmail

— @jason (@Jason) June 12, 2026

How dare he create hundreds of thousands of jobs, trillions in wealth for others, accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, help paralyzed/disabled people to become more independent and connect poor/low income areas to the internet!

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 12, 2026

Imagine hating a guy whose rap sheet is:

-jobs
-wealth creation
-clean energy
-self driving cars for mobility for the elderly
-helping paralyzed people walk again
-internet for the poor

Sounds like an absolute MONSTER 😂😂😂

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 12, 2026

Reckless biased propaganda. You should be grateful instead.

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) June 12, 2026

I thought we were supposed to stop spreading hate

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 12, 2026

Elon has created thousands of millionaires through his endeavors. What have you done outside of yapping about better humans? pic.twitter.com/21dRG3AlYB

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole) June 12, 2026

The fact that you are focusing on envy and hate instead of how to innovate and be successful like Elon speaks volumes about your writers and your sad little entity.

Pathetic.

— Carol Roth (@caroljsroth) June 12, 2026

It's not just Globe And Mail, the globalist Financial Times pushes the information operation to paint Musk as 'evil' ... 

Opinion: You might have thought the world’s richest man had enough on his plate teeing up history’s biggest IPO. Yet he has been devoting many of his waking hours to stoking up racial hatred in Britain on his social media site. https://t.co/1C09ebAgPg pic.twitter.com/sFFtPM3RVx

— Financial Times (@FT) June 12, 2026

The left is losing its mind as the nation progresses forward with pro-American innovation and wokeness dies in darkness. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 20:43

Russia Is Single-Handedly Standing Against The West: Putin

"It was they who carried out the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which forced us to take the people of Crimea under protection. When they started the war, they started bombing Donetsk using warplanes" - Putin in a fresh address to Russian service members came out swinging, giving a familiar lesson in recent history.

And quite provocatively, he emphasized that Russia is now practically fighting against the entirety of the collective West in the Ukraine conflict in the Friday remarks.

"Russia is standing against the so-called Collective West single-handedly," Putin said, state media cited, and he noted that the 'special military operation' he ordered to stave off NATO encroachment is revealing itself to be "exceedingly high-tech."

via AP

"The NATO nations are all, without exception, ramping up efforts to do all they can to orchestrate actions against Russia," he added, sate media continued.

He stressed that Moscow did not initiate the Ukraine conflict, but that the Western allies and their hegemonic expansion and meddling did.

He perhaps for the first time acknowledged some pain inflicted on Russia due to Ukraine's long-range drone waves, which for months have been inflicting serious damage primarily on oil and energy sites:

Now, Western nations have set out to "inflict a strategic defeat on Russia," but "this is not something that can be done," Putin said.

"The enemy is expanding the use of [kamikaze] drones… trying to strike at our morale, trying to break up Russian society… and cause economic damage," he noted, stressing that "they will not succeed."

These drones have grown more long-range in their targeting and increasingly effective, as Russia's anti-air defense - which are set up primarily to intercept higher flying and faster inbound missiles or jets - seem powerless. 

Or rather, if Ukraine sends 100 drones on Russia on any given night, at least dozens are bound to make it through, the recent pattern has shown. But Putin also seems to be strongly suggesting that Western intelligence is assisting Ukraine's drone mayhem on the Russian populace.

Images have surfaced online showing what the military-industrial plant in Cheboksary looks like after being struck by a "Flamingo" drone. The photos show that anti-drone nets had been installed around the facility, but they ultimately failed to prevent the attack. pic.twitter.com/FSK9tP96V8

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) June 10, 2026

Earlier this month, the Putin-hosted St. Petersburg Economic Forum came under significant drone attack from Ukraine. Videos revealed that international dignitaries entered the venue against the backdrop of thick black smoke from drone hits on oil and other facilities.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 20:30

Welfare-Warfare State Reform Is Not Freedom

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

The libertarian movement can be divided into two basic groups: libertarians who call for reforming welfare-warfare state programs and libertarians who call for dismantling welfare-warfare state programs.

I fall within the latter group. Why? Because I want to be free. Reform doesn’t get me freedom. At best it gets me a better serfdom. That’s nice, but it’s not want I want for the rest of my life. I want to be free, and only by dismantling infringements on freedom can I attain genuine freedom.

Consider 19th-century slavery, for example. Imagine libertarian reformers in the state of Mississippi calling for slavery reform. They would say, “Slavery is here to stay. It’s in the Constitution. We have to strive for what we can get. We also need to gain the respect and credibility of the people of Mississippi. We won’t do that by being radical and calling for the end of slavery. We must settle for advocating slavery reforms, such as shorter working hours, fewer lashings, better food, improved working conditions, and a bit of education.”

Would the slaves have been happy with such reforms? Undoubtedly, because their slavery would have been improved. But there would have been one big problem with these reforms: They wouldn’t have meant freedom for the slaves. To achieve freedom would have necessitated a dismantling of slavery, not its reform. Thus, the dismantle-libertarians would be raising people’s vision to a higher level — one that showed the evil, immorality, and destructiveness of slavery itself.

The fact that calling for the dismantling of slavery wouldn’t have been a popular position among the people of Mississippi would have been considered irrelevant to dismantle-libertarians. What would have mattered to those libertarians was not what the general population felt about them but the fact that they would be advocating what was right.

The principle is no different with respect to the serfdom under which we live today.

Our way of life is not one of strict slavery, like that of 19th-century slavery. But it is quite similar in terms of the serfdom way of life under which we live.

Under our serfdom way of life, the federal government is our master, and we are its servants.

We work to support the federal government.

That is our mission in life under the welfare-warfare state political-economic system under which we have all been born and raised.

The government decides how much of our earnings we are permitted to keep, much as a parent decides how much of an allowance to give his children.

That’s what the federal income tax, which formed no part of American life for more than 100 years after the founding of the United States, is all about.

We live under a governmental system that requires us to share a part of our earnings with others.

That’s what Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, bailouts, and other welfare-state programs are all about. We are told that this mandated sharing shows what a good, caring, and compassionate people we are, even though no one is free to opt out.

We live under a governmental system that punishes us for consuming substances that the government says are harmful to us.

It serves as our daddy to make certain that we are taking care of ourselves. It sends us to our room if we disobey. The room is in a federal penitentiary..

We live under a governmental system that forces parents to subject their children to the state’s educational system, which can easily be described as army-lite. Here children’s minds are bent and molded into conformity, regimentation, deference to authority, and blind obedience to the ruler or to the government and its official narratives. It’s here that people are indoctrinated since early childhood into believing that their serfdom way of life is freedom.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

We live under a socialist (i.e., central-planning) immigration-control system that comes with a brutal immigration police state, which entails death, suffering, humiliation, and massive destruction of economic liberty, free markets, private property, civil liberties, and privacy.

We live under a national-state governmental system, one in which the military, the CIA, and the NSA wield omnipotent, totalitarian, and dictatorial powers, including assassination (i.e., murder), secret surveillance, seizures, kidnappings, torture, and incarceration for life — all without due process of law and trial by jury.

What do reform-libertarians say about this serfdom way of life?

They say, “The system needs reform.” And so they come up with all sorts of welfare-warfare state reforms to make the serfdom more palatable.

Some examples of libertarian welfare-warfare state reforms are: school vouchers, raising the Social Security retirement age, health-savings accounts, income-tax reduction and reining in the IRS, improved concentration camps for illegal immigrants who are being deported, ending civil-asset forfeiture, legalizing only marijuana, reducing military spending, limiting secret surveillance, reining in the CIA, limiting foreign interventionism to cases involving “national security,” and getting members of the “freedom movement” into public office to manage the welfare-warfare state and the regulatory departments and agencies.

Would such libertarian reforms be beneficial? Undoubtedly!

They would almost certainly improve our serfdom way of life, much like libertarian slavery reform would have improved the condition of 19th-century slaves.

But there is one great big problem with libertarian reform of the welfare-warfare state. It’s not freedom, any more than slavery reform would have meant freedom for the slaves.

In order to achieve freedom, it is necessary (1) to identify the infringements on freedom that are preventing people from being free, and then (2) dismantle, not reform, every single one of such infringements.

Is that an easy task? Of course not, especially when the vast majority of Americans are convinced that their serfdom way of life already constitutes freedom. (Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”)

But if freedom were easy, everyone in history would have had it.

Achieving freedom is extremely difficult. It requires a critical mass of people who have come to understand what genuine freedom is and have decided to do whatever they can to achieve freedom, rather than simply settle for a warmed-over, improved serfdom.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 20:05

"They All Believe That Taiwan's Part Of China", Former Reagan Advisor On Chinese Nationalism

Iran is dominating headlines, but Washington’s favorite bipartisan monster abroad is never too far from the sights of the hawks. Just days ago, and while the U.S. is fighting a war, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell scolded Marco Rubio for pausing a weapons shipment to Taiwan.

Last night, ZeroHedge hosted opposing think tankers to answer the question that DC likes to keep ambiguous: Should the U.S. defend Taiwan if China invades?

In the “no” corner was Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who once served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. Arguing “yes”, we should intervene, is the Heritage Foundation’s Steve Yates, a former deputy national security advisor to the Vice President Dick Cheney.

Below were the highlights for those who missed it:

Are We Prepared?

Bandow argued that the Taiwan debate often understates both the depth of Chinese nationalism and the possibility that a U.S.-China conflict could escalate beyond anyone's control. He said his interactions with Chinese students while teaching summer programs convinced him that the issue is not simply the ambition of Xi Jinping but a broadly shared belief that Taiwan is part of China.

"Chinese students are very nationalistic. They all believe that Taiwan's part of China. So this is a sentiment that is not just the folks in Zhang Nanhai. I mean, it's not just President Xi."

Bandow's central warning was that threatening war requires being prepared to follow through even if events spiral. He questioned whether the United States has fully grappled with the consequences of escalation, particularly if China began losing and faced attacks on mainland targets.

"If we're going to threaten to go to war, it's very hard to back down… If the Chinese find themselves losing, if the Chinese find that we are attacking mainland bases, what are they likely to do? They are likely to escalate… How do we control that?"

Bandow said Taiwan is "a wonderful place" but asked whether Americans are prepared to risk their own society (and life, civilization… really everything). The key question, according to him, is not whether Taiwan deserves sympathy, but whether the United States is prepared for what could become a full-scale war with another major nuclear power.

"Are we prepared to risk our own society?... We cannot assume it would turn out well… Are we prepared for a full-scale war?"

pic.twitter.com/xEQzerBZVg

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) June 12, 2026 Fentanyl!

Yates said Beijing's role in the fentanyl crisis is not accidental, arguing that China's extensive surveillance apparatus makes it implausible that authorities are unaware of the scale of the trade flowing through Chinese manufacturers and financial networks.

"It's the world's most advanced surveillance state to the point where they literally will find images of Winnie the Pooh on Hong Kong protesters' phones… completely implausible that they can have illicit precursors manufactured at a scale sufficient to result in half a million American fatalities counted conservatively over ten years without them knowing."

The issue, he said, has been raised repeatedly at the highest levels of diplomacy and can no longer be dismissed as something that escaped Beijing's attention.

"It's not something that snuck up on them… There really is no ambiguity of where it's coming from and at what scale."

While Yates acknowledged he cannot prove that Chinese leaders explicitly intended to kill Americans, he argued that intent becomes harder to dismiss when the trade continues after years of warnings and mounting casualties.

"Did they say, 'I want to do this in order to have this effect?’ Maybe, maybe not. I don't think we'll ever get to know… But once it is in train and moving and three presidents have raised it and the casualty numbers reached what would be considered a weapon of mass destruction level, it's kind of hard to say that they have clean hands, or there's no intent to allow it to happen."

pic.twitter.com/jhZkbl3LYI

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) June 12, 2026 Full Debate

Watch the full debate below or listen on Spotify. 

https://t.co/SyvVxuu7Gt

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 11, 2026 Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 19:40